You do not have health insurance.

Right now, it appears that the biggest barrier to health care reform is people who think that it will hurt them. According to a New York Times poll, â69 percent of respondents in the poll said they were concerned that the quality of their own care would decline if the government created a program that covers everyone.â Since most Americans currently have health insurance, they see reform as a poverty program â something that helps poor people and hurts them. If thatâs what you think, then this post is for you.

You do not have health insurance. Let me repeat that. You do not have health insurance. (Unless you are over 65, in which case you do have health insurance. Iâll come back to that later.)

The point of insurance is to protect you against unlikely but damaging events. You are generally happy to pay premiums in all the years that nothing goes wrong (your house doesnât burn down), because in exchange your insurer promises to be there in the one year that things do go wrong (your house burns down). Thatâs why, when shopping for insurance, you are supposed to look for a company that is financially sound â so they will be there when you need them.

If, like most people, your health coverage is through your employer or your spouseâs employer, that is not what you have. At some point in the future, you will get sick and need expensive health care. What are some of the things that could happen between now and then?

Your company could drop its health plan. According to the U.S. Census Bureau (see Table HIA-1), the percentage of the population covered by employer-based health insurance has fallen every year since 2000, from 64.2% to 59.3%.*
You could lose your job. I donât think I need to tell anyone what the unemployment rate is these days.**
You could voluntarily leave your job, for example because you have to move to take care of an elderly relative.
You could get divorced from the spouse you depend on for health coverage.
For all of these reasons, you canât count on your health insurer being there when you need it. Thatâs not insurance; thatâs employer-subsidized health care for the duration of your employment.

Once you lose your employer-based coverage, for whatever reason, youâre in the individual market, where, you may be surprised to find, you have no right to affordable health insurance. An insurer can refuse to insure you or can charge you a premium you canât afford because of your medical history. Thatâs the way a free market works: an insurer would be crazy to charge you less than the expected cost of your medical care (unless they can make it up on their healthy customers, which they canât in the individual market).(more

This is more or less accurate, but it argues for limited reform, not an obama-style government takeover of health care. The fundamental problem is the linkage of health insurance to employment. That needs to be changed, perhaps by charging employees taxes on the value of their insurance, since it is clearly a form of compensation. At the same time, employees need an alternative to their employer-provided insurance, so we need to authorize national risk pools for insurers. Finally, to eliminate the free rider problem, we need to require some minimal form of major medical for everyone.

A lot of people would squawk about this, because they feel they have a right to "free", employer-provided insurance. That is the main reason we will end up with an opaque reform package that will lead to a total government takeover. Then the politicians can say they replaced one free insurance policy with another. Only now, obama and the same minions that want you to report people who criticize them will be in charge of deciding who gets what care.

Right now, it appears that the biggest barrier to health care reform is people who think that it will hurt them.

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The biggest barrier to health care reform is Obama has done a lousy job selling it. The democrats alone can pass it with zero republican support but a considerable portion of the democrat caucus has failed to sign on. That failure rests with Obama and Obama alone. You know its bad when the general public is making reference to provisions in the bill that Obama did not even know existed. Obama better get it through this fall or he will officially be a lameduck President.

Actually health insurance for an individual is far less expensive than employer provided group insurance, IF, the individual is healthy, and there's the rub. Too many won't qualify for individual heath insurance under the current system. So what to do. Here's a solution that would satisfy all but the extremist on both sides, which I have always stated that those people should be ignored.
Let's say you have a person that currently has employer provided health care and it's costing the employer the equivalent of about 4 bucks an hour for that plan. Under a new system the employer could opt out and provide no health care, but they then have to pay the employee the 4 bucks an hour as part of their wage. No free ride for big business!! The employee then goes to a private insurer and attempts to get health coverage. IF he and/or his family are healthy enough, the 4 bucks an hour will be more than enough to pay the premiums. IF he gets turned down by say, 2-3 providers, then and only then a government plan picks him up.
You may argue that the private insurers would dump everyone on the government. Not if they want to stay in business. In fact, I would argue that standards would become more reasonable to get insurance just because of the competition. Employers would not necessarily have incentive to dump their plans and the cost for group coverage might actually come down as well with the competition.
Of course, this plan must have help to work. Tort reform and end of life issues need to be addressed, especially end of life issues. People in this country need to come to grips with the fact that nobody lives forever. The "plug" needs to be pulled far earlier than it is under the current mindset.
Just some thoughts for the sane and rational among you.

stop trying to use obama scare tactics, you could lose ur job, this could happen , that could happen, yadda yadda

i got news for you dipshit, ANYTHING can happen in this universe,you could die anytime reading through this post, suck it up this is america.

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My 10 year-old son is disabled and requires medical care.

Should he "suck it up" too?

Thank goodness I have an extremely good health plan at an extremely stable job, and I am a consistently profitable trader. I am in the minority in the workplace, and among the brilliant, um, MINDS at ET.

Thank goodness I have an extremely good health plan at an extremely stable job, and I am a consistently profitable trader. I am in the minority in the workplace, and among the brilliant, um, MINDS at ET.

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Under Obama your 10 year-old who is disabled will be labeled as a non-viable member of society and will be denied treatment. Once the single-payer system is in place you will have nowhere to turn. You better hope this legislation fails and you keep your private insurance.

Under Obama your 10 year-old who is disabled will be labeled as a non-viable member of society and will be denied treatment. Once the single-payer system is in place you will have nowhere to turn. You better hope this legislation fails and you keep your private insurance.

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This kind of wild accusation, in places that have some respect for facts, would call for a cite.
So, some specifics, please?